Rock art lover

• Oil on canvas

• Size: 215 x 155 x 6.5 cm including black wood frame, 210 x 150 unframed

• R220 000.00 excluding commission

In Rock art lover, Robert Slingsby brings together satire, myth and archaeological memory in one of his most overtly metaphorical works. Originally created for the series, The Archive of unspoken things, the painting confronts the gatekeeping forces that shape access to history, culture and knowledge, forces Slingsby has encountered throughout his decades of research in remote rock art sites.

At the centre stands a cartoon-like, almost monstrous figure, its form loosely inspired by the Rochester rock art site. Part guardian, part obstruction, it becomes a symbol of the institutions and personalities that police the boundaries of heritage and scholarship. Around it, Slingsby assembles a dense matrix of marks, symbols and motifs, some drawn from his fieldwork in the Richtersveld, where he documented the tiny figures that reappear here as the “teeth” of a chainsaw. Their repetition transforms them from ancient inscriptions into an instrument of violent erasure, underscoring the tension between preservation and destruction.

The chainsaw itself operates as a layered metaphor. On one level, it references the artist’s own battles with cultural gatekeepers; on another, it nods to contemporary corporate narratives of drastic “cutting back,” including high-profile personnel reductions that have recently captured global attention. In Slingsby’s hands, the image becomes a critique of how power, whether institutional or corporate, decides what is kept, what is lost and who is left outside the conversation.

Scattered limbs, spurts of red and a tag reading Rock art lover lend the work a dark humour that offsets its seriousness. Slingsby channels frustration into a riotous, surreal theatre of symbols, where ancient imagery and modern anxieties collide. Rock art lover is both a protest and a confession: a sharp, unflinching look at the cultural and professional forces that shape an artist’s journey and at the fragility of the histories we struggle to protect.

Eutierria   

• Oil on 510 gram canvas bonded to plywood panel

• Size: 124.5 x 95 x 6.5 cm including white wood frame, 120 x 90 unframed

• R90 000.00 excluding commission

In this work, Slingsby reflects on the fragile state of the environment and humanity’s accelerating impact in the Anthropocene. At its core is the idea of Eutierria, a deep, intuitive sense of unity with the earth, where the boundary between self and nature dissolves.

Cutting through the composition, the zigzag line becomes a symbolic rupture: a Eutierria tear that marks the widening disconnect between humans and the natural world. Above it, a constellation of symbols unfolds. Developed over decades, this personal lexicon draws on the visual language of ancient rock art iconography, echoing humanity’s long history of seeking connection with the land.

uMamlambo

• Oil on 510 gram canvas bonded to plywood panel

• Size: 155 x 125 x 6.5 cm including white wood frame, 150 x 120 unframed

• R135 000.00 excluding commission

In uMamlambo, Robert Slingsby turns to the figure of the water spirit found in several Southern African traditions - an elusive, shape-shifting presence associated with rivers, depth, and the unseen currents that move beneath the surface of daily life. Rather than depicting the spirit literally, Slingsby interprets uMamlambo through a dynamic field of flowing forms and interwoven lines, evoking the sensation of something powerful and otherworldly stirring beneath water.

Sweeping waves of red, yellow, black and grey seem to ripple across the canvas, their rhythms suggesting both movement and metamorphosis. The composition oscillates between abstraction and hints of figuration, echoing how mythic beings occupy the threshold between the known and the unknown. The fine linear tracings that thread through the work recall Slingsby’s long-developed symbolic language, rooted in ancient iconographies yet reimagined as a contemporary visual code.

uMamlambo reflects Slingsby’s ongoing exploration of spiritual ecologies: the spaces where land, water, memory and myth converge. In this work, the water spirit becomes a metaphor for the fluid energies that shape human experience: mysterious, powerful and intimately tied to the natural world.

Find out more at Context Art Miami or see the works 2-7 December 2025 at Booth B03.